The following is the transcript of an interview with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent that aired on “Face the Nation with Margaret Brennan” on March 2, 2025.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Good morning to you, Mr. Treasury Secretary.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Good morning Margaret.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So let’s dig on- in on this, because it seems there’s a bit of a perception gap there. Our polling also shows at least half the country reports concern about paying for food and groceries and housing. They continue to call the economy bad, even more so than last month, and 49% told us the economy is getting worse. When can Americans expect to experience the benefits that President Trump said would be coming in day one?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: You know, Margaret, what I find interesting is, for the past year and a half, and during the campaign, most of the media said, Oh, the economy is great. It’s just a vibe session. Now that President Trump’s in office, there’s an economic problem. And I’ll tell you what the problem was–
MARGARET BRENNAN: We were pretty straightforward on this program.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, I haven’t seen this program, but the- in general, this idea that working class Americans didn’t know what they were talking about, they didn’t know their lived experience, they didn’t know what their pocketbooks were feeling. And I tell you, President Trump was elected, one of the reasons was the affordability crisis, and we are setting about doing that. So after four years, four years of disastrous policies, they were running these gigantic deficits that the- that led to the affordability problem, massive government regulations. So what we had was a demand shock from the government spending that was met by supply constraints with over regulation. So we are in the process of deregulating, which will free the supply side, and we are cutting back the government spending. It took four years to get us here. President Trump has been in office five weeks, and I can tell you, we’re working every day. What I will point out, interest rates- a 10 year bond, which I am focused on, have been down every week since President Trump was president. Mortgage rates have been down every week. So that’s a pretty good start.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I hear you that sometimes the data lags reality, but when we are talking about people’s perceptions of the economy, it’s just how they’re feeling right now, we see in our polling, 52% of Americans say Trump’s policies are making grocery prices go up. They explicitly said that on this bar chart you see there. So it’s an experience and a perception issue. When does that shift? When we see the benefits of the planning you say is underway?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Look, I think President Trump said that he’ll own the economy in six or 12 months, but I can tell you that we are working to get these prices down every day, but it took four years to get us here, and we’ve had five weeks so interest rates are down. That’s a very good start toward housing affordability, toward auto affordability, and we are tackling this. At Treasury we are going to appoint an affordability czar. We are going to have an affordability Council. We are laser focused on this–
MARGARET BRENNAN: What does that mean? What’s an affordability czar?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Someone who picks the five or eight areas where this administration can make a big difference for working class Americans?
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Well, one of the things that we hear the President talk about a lot is the plan to use tariffs. I know this falls under the purview of Commerce and the trade rep, but you have spoken a bit about it before. If the President does roll out the 10% tariffs that he says are coming on China this week, the 25% on Canada and Mexico, how much do you think they will impact what Americans experience? The Peterson Institute says it will cost households an additional $1,200 a year.
Speaker 1 SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Look, a couple of things I respect my friends at the Peterson Institute, I think they’re a bit alarmist. I think a lot of their supporters are anti-tariffs, so they take an anti-tariff position. And look, we have the experience of President Trump’s first term, where the tariffs did not affect prices. And it’s a holistic approach, that there will be tariffs, there will be cuts in regulation, there will be cheaper energy. So I would expect that very quickly we will be down to the Fed’s 2% target. So I’m expecting inflation to continue dropping over the year.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So should we expect these tariffs to come March 4?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, there’s a series of tariffs. There’s March 4, and then there are the big the there’s the big tariff program that’s going to be outlined on April 2 by commerce and USTR, and that’s the President’s notion of reciprocal tariffs. And that’s going to be very path dependent. It’s- we are going to show what are other countries tariffs on specific goods? What are non tariff barriers? What are the currency manipulation, what is manipulation of financing or labor manipulation, and what are these horrendous fines that the European Union is putting on our tech companies, and we are going to evaluate that and give them an opportunity to remedy that, so we could either see a ratcheting up in tariffs, or if our trading partners want to remedy what has been unfair trade, then we could see the tariffs come off. So it’s going to be path dependent.
MARGARET BRENNAN: And that’s Europe in April, mainly?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, that’s across the world.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. So when you say the Peterson Institute is too alarmist, with $1,200 a year on the average household, what’s the cost of the household? You think it’s zero?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, we don’t know yet, because it’s path dependent, but what I can tell you is that I’m not worried about China. China is going to- China will pay for the China tariffs, because their business model is exporting their way out of this inflation. They are the most imbalanced, unbalanced economy in modern times, and the idea that because of a tariff, that they would lower their production is wrong. They are going to continue flooding the market. They will eat this price decrease. They will eat any tariffs that go on.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So I saw you say on Bloomberg recently that Mexico has offered to match the US tariffs on China, and that you would like for the Canadians to do so as well. You described it as a fortress in North America. Is that in the works?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: I don’t know yet. We’ll see the Mexican leadership has offered to do that. We haven’t heard from the Canadians, but I think that would be a very good start, because-
MARGARET BRENNAN: By Tuesday, potentially to offset the potential punishment on them?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: By Tuesday, or maybe the tariff wall goes up, and then we see what happens from there. But I can tell you that under the cover of COVID, China dramatically increased their export capacity, and they are trying to export their way to prosperity. They are in an economic crisis. They have gigantic deflation, and it’s unacceptable for them to export that to the rest of the world. And I think North America would be a very good start for pushing back against this unfair trade policy.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Well, that would be a significant development.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Very significant.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Which would avoid tariffs that are supposed to go out on Tuesday.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: We’ll see.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, we’ll be watching that space. I want to ask you about Ukraine. You were in that Oval Office meeting that went sideways on Friday. He- President Zelensky, was told to leave the White House before he signed the minerals agreement that I know you have been working on, he said yesterday, though he is ready to sign it, he called it the first step towards security guarantees. It’s not enough. We need more than just that. A cease fire without security guarantees is dangerous for Ukraine. Is the deal still on the table, or has President Trump instructed you to drop the project?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Margaret, it is impossible to have an economic deal without a peace deal. The sine qua non for an economic deal, is that Ukrainian leadership wants a peace deal.
MARGARET BRENNAN: I thought this was a building block towards getting to
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, it was supposed to be, but President Zelensky came into the Oval on Friday. There were, there were three things that were going to be done. There was going to be a press conference, there’s going to be a private lunch with 16 of us, and as you can see from Dan Scavino’s, the post on his X account, we were all ready set up to sign, to sign the deal. So it’s unclear now, President Zelensky has thrown off the sequencing, and Margaret, let me tell you the most tragic part of this the President Trump’s idea for this economic arrangement was to further intertwine the American people and Ukrainian people and show no daylight. To show the Russian leadership that there was no daylight, and President Zelensky came into the Oval Office and tried to relitigate in front of the world the deal. And we were going- the place to have done it would have been in the private lunch.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay, well, it’s news to me that this was that the sequencing is shifting, that you were saying you have to agree to a peace deal before the minerals agreement? There aren’t even negotiations for a peace deal anyway.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well first of all, it’s not a minerals agreement. It’s a general economic agreement. So calling it a minerals agreement is incorrect, and I think we have to see if President Zelensky wants to proceed, what’s- what’s the use in having an economic agreement that’s going to be rendered moot if he wants the fighting to continue. President Trump wants a peace deal. .
MARGARET BRENNAN: Vladimir Putin, it’s unclear if he wants a peace deal, though there are no negotiations underway. The Secretary of State said that on another network this morning.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Yeah, and President Trump- President Trump has said that President Trump is trying to move towards peace. He said repeatedly during- during that episode in the Oval we don’t know if we’ll get a peace deal, but we got to try.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Okay. Last Sunday, President Trump’s envoy Steve Witkoff, said on another network that the plan for negotiations was the so-called draft Istanbul protocol. The Institute for the Study of War, says that this would leave Ukraine helpless in the face of future Russia– Russian threats or aggression, if, if that’s described as the Future of Us diplomacy and the framework. Why isn’t Mr. Zelensky asking the right question when he says, How can I agree to a ceasefire with no security guarantees or even a minerals agreement or investment agreement without security guarantees?
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Well, look, I think the plan is for the European Union to provide this security, not NATO, the European Union. And again, the tragedy of Friday, and I don’t know what President Zelensky was thinking. We had President of France, Emmanuel Macron, in on Monday, great meeting. Then- we had Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Thursday. Fantastic meeting. They were all on board the arc of the peace agreement. All President Zelensky had to do was come in and sign this economic agreement and again show no daylight, no daylight between Ukrainian people and the American people, and he chose to
blow that up.
MARGARET BRENNAN: So the deal is no longer on the table, just to be abundantly clear.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Not at present.
MARGARET BRENNAN: Treasury Secretary Bessent thank you for coming in today.
SECRETARY SCOTT BESSENT: Thank you Margaret.
